flawed, but still okay

I think I need to come to grips with the fact that I am not perfect. Now folks, I know that I'm not. I know this full well, but I still have this inner voice that says, "You're not good enough because you're not perfect." Well, HELLO!! I'm human, you expected me to be God? Noooo...I am not. I am me. And me is imperfect and flawed, and I actually like that I'm not perfect. It makes the learning process quite a bit more interesting. Let's face it--if we were somehow perfect, life would be so darn boring. This isn't to say that I seek out conflicts and challenges, but without them, living would be duller than...something that's dull.

I was talking about this with Tyler yesterday. It was quite the illuminating conversation--as our conversations tend to be, at least I feel enlightened afterwards. (Gee, I have my own personal guru! ;) Too bad I can't usually return the favor. But those who seek not the wisdom of the psycho African elf girl miss out on...tree hugging and bubble blowing. And THAT is a sad fate indeed.)

This inner voice that somewhat demands perfection of me sounds a lot like my dad. Even when I still had a 4.0 in college, it seemingly wasn't good enough for him. (?) I don't even know how that is possible, but there it is. Personally, I've gotten so used to my dad's perfectionist mentality that it seems normal. Let me clarify that my dad is a good man--he is a very good man. He loves his family, he loves God, he loves people. He just misaligns his priorities sometimes. Also, he's much better than he was when I was younger. He's learned A LOT about being a dad now that Gwen and I are out of high school. I think it just took a few wake-up calls.

But whoever is to blame for this--me, my dad, the devil, whoever!--I have this mentality that if I don't have everything all together and that I'm not absolutely perfect that I'm failing. I guess in some ways, non-perfection is a form of failure, but we're all imperfect, so I shouldn't be so egotistical to think that I'm the only person who does this...

I feel like this is a repeat blog from before. (Probably...) I hope that one of these days, writing all this out will somehow make it stick. And at THAT point, I'll move on to the next flaw. Hey, I got 'em, might as well figure 'em out!